Not everybody's thankful for Skyrim this week, but most of us are. We explore this latest epic entry in The Elder Scrolls quintology. Plus, what the heck is Ubisoft doing with Assassin's Creed? (Beats us.) And is it ever OK to ignore multiplayer modes when reviewing games? We think so, and we'll tell you why. Many thanks to our very special guest, the brilliant Rhea Monique! With Chi Kong Lui, Mike Bracken, Richard "Bob Dylan" Naik, Tim Spaeth, and Tim Spaeth again as the mysterious and enigmatic J. Bradford Gallaway IV.

Cleveland native Tim Spaeth grew up in a happy household – a household with a father whose major client happened to be an Atari games distributor. This led directly to Tim's first nickname: "The kid who got Atari games before anyone else." Indeed, he knew Pac-Man and E.T. were colossal bombs weeks before the rest of the world, and the resulting celebrity brought him great pleasure.

Through the years every aspect of Tim's life has been touched by gaming. He mastered typing thanks to Space Quest, honed his poker skills on The Sierra Network, and learned to hate after a particularly traumatic game of Tecmo Super Bowl.

Today, Tim lives in Chicago with his three kids and strives to find that perfect balance between family, career, and Warcraft. He enjoys broadcasting, martial arts, rock and roll, growing and shaving his beard, singing show tunes to the homeless, and losing at Mario Kart to his lovely, talented, and amazing girlfriend.

In late 2008, Tim became the producer and host of the GameCritics.com Podcast, and he's thrilled to be bringing GameCritics' unique editorial voice to a brand new medium.

I’m totally fine when a review leaves out a part of a game as long as it says on what portion of the game the opinion is based on. Actually it’s most probably only giving a limited view on a particular experience since the average game is not static- for everyone the same- as a film is. And usually longer than 2 hours too. An incomplete but a sufficient entirety would be great but i doubt it can be done with many games since there are all sorts of things some might see and some might miss. So as long… Read more »

[quote=Anonymous]Who made/where did you guys find that remix of istanbul (not constantinople) that was used for the outro to the assassin’s creed segment?[/quote]That’s actually a TMBG-created remix off their new download-only album “Album Raises New and Troubling Questions” (which I strongly recommend, by the way).

Also, for those asking when we’re doing (re-doing) Batman: Arkham City, it’s happening this weekend. I don’t think we’ve ever had more of an internal disagreement about a game. Should be interesting.

I thought I did mention the horrible UI when I went on my mini rant. If I didn’t, it was an oversight — because I agree that the UI blows — and I haven’t even experienced it on the PC, which sounds even worse.

Guys, I can’t believe you didn’t talk about Skyrim’s aweful, awful User Interfase. I’m playing on the PC and cannot understand what was going on in their heads when they thought of it. People complained about Mass Effect 1 and its neverending lists but Skyrim is just as bad. You cannot have two equipments, you cannot easily compare items, you cannot rebuy, the skilltrees are all but unmanagable. The worst thing is that, on the PC, some menues can only be used with keyboard while other just with the mouse. It’s madness I tell you! To illustrate how aweful it… Read more »

As a disclaimer, I’m a fan of Uncharted, and a regular player of its multiplayer (300h on 2, 120h on 3 at the moment). I’ve refrained from commenting on the subject until now, because I think Chi’s review makes perfectly valid points on the solo and discloses that he hasn’t played the multiplayer. I’m quite disappointed by the justifications in this podcast however. Nothing prevented Chi of clearly labelling the review as a single player only review. It has been done before on this very site, even though the disclosure is already made in the closing paragraphs of each review… Read more »

I really like the Assassin’s Creed series, and last year’s Brotherhood was very good, but I have no immediate desire to play Revelations. I think the frequent releases are getting to me, and I was never that invested in Ezio in the first place. I’ll wait until it gets cheap. As for Skyrim, the PS3 version of the game is standing on my shelf, waiting to be played, but I’m sitting out the patch, which was my intent in the first place. I’m really excited about the fact that you can finally start as a blank slate (no more pegging… Read more »

RickRoll’d Richard’s singing. Not having Skyrim, I thought the annualization section of this podcast was most interesting. I think I’m one of the only people who enjoyed Assassin’s Creed 1 for what it was, a historical Mario style 3D platformer. I didn’t get disappointed by the too much space, too little to do issues of the game, because I knew the story was only so much smoke and mirrors anyway. I just enjoyed the scenery.. I thought the locales were beautifully rendered. I wasn’t looking for depth in AC. When the 2nd game came out and introduced the good organization… Read more »

As always, a big thanks to the entire cast for sharing your insights and wisdom! Looking forward to the end-of-year show. I agree that Skyrim is a return to form for the TES series – in my case since Daggerfall. The world feels appropriately vast and epic for a TES game, finally. Morrowind’s world was to me just too enclosed and limited when compared to the previous game. (Didn’t play Oblivion.) The only thing I find myself wanting from time to time are the truly sprawling cities from Daggerfall. Of course procedurally constructed and lacking in detail – some would… Read more »

I had no problem reviewing Portal 2 on singleplayer alone. Portal 1 was a very good singleplayer game, and I came to the sequel for more of that. If Valve wanted to add a new mode, good for them, but I had no interest in playing it for more than a half hour.

Twitter

Code of Conduct

Comments are subject to approval/deletion based on the following criteria:
1) Treat all users with respect.
2) Post with an open-mind.
3) Do not insult and/or harass users.
4) Do not incite flame wars.
5) Do not troll and/or feed the trolls.
6) No excessive whining and/or complaining.